Hu Shih praised his critical essay for being well-written
© Xu Min |
During the Pingjin Campaign in 1949, the Nationalist Government sent a special plane to Beiping to pick up cultural people to go south according to the rescue list, and Hu Shi ranked first on the list, and Zhu Guangqian ranked third. Chen Xueping, the acting minister of the Ministry of Education at the time, personally went to Zhu Guangqian's residence and persuaded him to go south. Zhu Guangqian asked where to go south? Chen said that he would go to Nanjing first. Zhu asked: What will happen if Nanjing can't be saved? Chen said that he would go to Taiwan. Zhu also asked: If the mainland can't protect itself, how can Taiwan protect itself? Chen said that Taiwan is a strategic location, and the United States will not leave it alone. Zhu Guangqian felt that the future was bleak after all, and it was not a long-term solution, so he finally refused the special plane that came to Beiping to pick up people, and chose to stay like most Chinese and old intellectuals.
He thinks that he is engaged in aesthetics, even if the dynasty changes, beauty is needed, right, what to run?
And, with his position in the academic world at the time, he should have been welcomed.
In July 1933, Zhu Guangqian set off from France to return to China with the first draft of his "Theory of Poetry". As early as a year ago, Anhui University had invited him to return to China to serve as the dean of the university's Faculty of Letters. But Zhu Guangqian declined the invitation, and his dream place of teaching was Peking University.
Before returning to China, he wrote a letter to Xu Zhongshu, an old classmate of the Institute of History of the Academia Sinica, to recommend to Hu Shi that Zhu Guangqian's self-recommended work was his just-finished "Poetry Theory". Hu Shi was very impressed by Zhu Guangqian's knowledge of Western literature, and immediately hired him as a professor of the Department of Western Languages at Peking University. Not only that, Hu Shi also considered that studying Chinese literature and not understanding foreign literature would inevitably have a narrow vision, so he arranged for Zhu Guangqian to explain foreign literature and aesthetics courses to Chinese students. This arrangement later achieved Zhu Guang's status as a potential Chinese aesthetician, and he gave lectures at Peking University with "Poetry Theory" and "Psychology of Literature and Art", which received enthusiastic responses and were very popular.
So Zhu Ziqing invited him to lecture in the research class of the Chinese Department of Tsinghua University for one year. Immediately, Xu Beihong also invited Zhu Guangqian to give a one-year lecture on "Literary Psychology" at the Central Academy of Arts.
At that time, Zhu Guangqian held classes in three schools at the same time, and he was in the limelight for a while, and his fame shocked the capital.
Ji Xianlin, who was studying in the Department of Western Literature of Tsinghua University, took Zhu Guangqian's aesthetics course at this time and listened to it for a whole year.
More than 50 years later, Ji Xianlin recalled the feeling of listening to the lecture back then, and thought that "this course is extraordinary, and it is the most satisfying course for me, which is incomparably better than the courses offered by foreign professors from Britain, the United States, France, Germany and other countries."
Ji Xianlin said: "Mr. Zhu is not the kind of person who is eloquent, his eloquence is not good, and he doesn't sound beautiful when he speaks Lanqing official dialect with an Anhui flavor." It seems that he was not an orator, and he never looked at the students in his lectures, and his eyes were turned upwards to look at a certain area on the ceiling or in the window. However, there is no nonsense, every sentence is clear. He introduced the popular literary and artistic theories of Western countries, and sometimes cited some old Chinese poems as examples, which is not far-fetched, and we can understand it as soon as we hear it. He can really tell a truth about those quirky theories, and I sound like I'm relishing. ”
Needless to say, this is a very high evaluation.
Even with such a high prestige in the education circles, Zhu Guangqian took the initiative to lower his value and took the lead in expressing support for the new regime. Even, in order to meet the needs of the times, he took the initiative to write a "self-review" published in the "People's Daily" on November 27, 1949, reflecting on the education he had received in European-American style of democracy and freedom, and said that he would turn to the study of Marxist-Leninist philosophy in the future.
At the end of 1951, mainland colleges and universities set off an upsurge of eliminating Hu Shi's influence and criticizing Hu Shih, and experts and scholars from all walks of life spoke one after another. In order to meet the needs of the movement, Zhu Guangqian also wrote an article "Clarifying the View of Hu Shi", in which he wrote:
"Hu Shi is from the Jixi family, his father was an official in Taiwan, and the family still has a business in Shanghai. In terms of origin, he belonged to the bourgeoisie and the feudal ruling class, and he has always been proud of his family background, which proves his feudal bones. His sectarian concept is very strong, and he will tell the family tree when he meets people, and if you have your surname Jiang and Cheng, he can prove that you are from Anhui, so he can be the same township as Wang Jingwei. In the Qing Dynasty, Huizhou was prevalent in the study of evidence, and the ancestors of the Hu family also had a Yugong researcher. Hu Shi loved to study evidence all his life, and later he was particularly fond of "Notes on the Water Classic", and this direction of interest was all determined by feudal tradition. ”
"Even at the time of the May Fourth Movement, he was already on a reactionary stand, defending imperialism and opposing the patriotic movement. It is impossible for a person to have truly reactionary ideas and to have truly progressive academic ideas. To what extent is Hu Shi's comprador mentality thick? For example, Americans like to collect stamps to satisfy their self-esteem in a strange way, so Hu Shi went unpopular and collected matchboxes. What kind of good person would such a comprador person with a strong comprador mind and a passion for pro-America be? ”
Zhu Guangqin also mentioned in the article that one day he went to see Hu Shi and saw many books spread out on the table in his study, which proved that he had no real learning on weekdays, and temporarily copied and picked up.
This article was reprinted by a Chinese-language newspaper in New York, USA. Someone asked Hu Shi, what was his reaction after reading it? Hu Shi laughed and said: "Mr. Zhu Guangqian's article is very well written! How could he not write in that environment? I have a lot of sympathy for him. ”
In 1981, Zhou Cezong, a scholar studying in the United States, returned to the mainland for a visit and visited Zhu Guangqian at Peking University, where he told Mr. Zhu what Hu Shi said. After listening to this, Zhu Guangqian looked at the young man who came to visit with Zhou Cezong, then lowered his head and said slowly in a very emotional tone: "Do you know, I have been teaching at Peking University for most of my life, and if I don't come to Peking University, I don't know what will happen to my life." I came to Peking University because Mr. Hu tried his best to introduce me! Speaking of this, Zhu Guangqian choked up, was silent for a long time, and was speechless.
Despite the sincere review and cooperation mentioned above, in 1952, when the departments of colleges and universities across the country were adjusted, Zhu Guangqian was organizationally allowed to move from the original Zhonglao Hutong to live in a few bungalows at the south gate of the former Yenching University. The houses here are in disrepair, and they are the back stove of a certain gentleman's house, which is crowded and dilapidated, and it leaks when it rains. Mrs. Xi Jinwu had to often carry pots around to catch the rain.
Not only that, but in the salary plan implemented at that time, the school also demoted Zhu Guangqian from a first-level professor to a seventh-level professor. For this kind of insulting behavior, Zhu Guangqian still did not say a word.
In the following series of reform movements, Zhu Guangqian lowered his stature more and more, constantly and deeply examined, and fundamentally denied his past academic views, he self-criticized: "My literary and artistic thinking is fundamentally wrong, because it is completely based on subjective idealism", "it is inevitably anti-realism, and it is inevitably anti-social and anti-people."
Through the review of the upper platform, Zhu Guangqian finally gained understanding. In 1956, he was allowed to move to a western-style building in the slightly spacious Yandong Garden, and his salary was restored to the standard of a first-class professor.
In 1966, the People's Daily published an editorial "sweeping away all cows, ghosts, snakes and gods". Zhu Guangqian was found out by the Red Guards as a cow ghost and snake god, not only was his home raided and people were beaten, but he was also imprisoned in the cowshed on the charge of "reactionary academic authority". At that time, Ji Xianlin was also imprisoned in the same cowshed. In the face of the various charges fabricated by the Red Guards and the extremely humiliating criticism meeting, Jian Bozan, Feng Ding, and Feng Youlan were all angry, and Jian Bozan even fought to the death with his wife. But Zhu Guangqian was able to endure humiliation and show a calm demeanor. Even if he was beaten by the Red Guards with blood all over his face and faltering, he could cope tenaciously.
Zhu Guangqian later recalled this past incident and recounted it in a calm tone: "During the Cultural Revolution, I was imprisoned in a cowshed and suffered mental and physical torture, so I suffered from chronic illness, coupled with lumbar muscle strain, and often fell involuntarily as soon as I stood up, and a serious illness almost cost me my life. "When I was in the cowshed, I was tired of cleaning the toilets, listening to training, being criticized, writing reviews and visiting materials, and my brain was numb to the point of being an idiot." If you are an ordinary person, I am afraid that you will not be able to bear it, but Zhu Guangqian actually survived.
Ji Xianlin, who was in the same cowshed as him, found that even in that gloomy environment, Zhu Guangqian was still exercising. After going to bed at night, Ji Xianlin "found that he was tossing around in the bed, and he didn't know what to do." In the morning, he sneaked into a corner to do tai chi and something like that. Once discovered by the supervisors, he was greatly criticized. ”
In July 1969, his wife Xi Jinwu's unit was all sent to the May 7 Cadre School of the Ministry of Education in Fengyang, Anhui Province to work, the eldest son Zhu Chen was placed in Anhui Feidong Qinglong Middle School, the eldest daughter Zhu Shijiayuan settled in Harbin, and the second daughter Zhu Shile went to the army farm in Hongdong, Shanxi, and the family was scattered.
Zhu Guangqian once felt gloomy about his future, and he said in a letter to his eldest son, Zhu Chen: "I want to go back to Anhui in the future, can I rent two or three private houses in Hefei?" Can you get someone to help with the cooking? I hope I'll keep an eye on it. He even pessimistically predicted that, depending on his health at the time, he would have about three to five years to live.
Just when he was a little discouraged, one day he was cleaning up the garbage in the Spanish department, and he found his lost translation of the second volume of Hegel's "Aesthetics" in the messy pile, which had been copied by the copyist a few years earlier. This surprised and delighted him, but he did not dare to take it without permission. Fortunately, Ma Shiyi, the person in charge of the United Nations data translation team, knew his thoughts very well, and asked him to take it back and "check the drugs" again. With Ma Shiyi's permission, Zhu Guangqian took advantage of the gap between labor and criticism to begin the work of recontinuating and collating Hegel's Aesthetics.
After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Zhu Guangqian devoted himself to the work of aesthetic translation. It wasn't until the spring of 1985 that his illness suddenly worsened, and his mind was sometimes sober, sometimes vague, and he was still worried about translation. Sometimes a phrase pops up: "This word should be translated like this." On the morning of March 5, 1986, Zhu Guangqian suddenly felt unwell and immediately vomited. The family hurriedly called Peking University Hospital, but no one answered; I called the driver's office again and replied that there was no car. He was not taken to the Friendship Hospital until 2 p.m., where he died at 2:30 a.m. the next day at the age of 89.
This scholar, who pursued aesthetics all his life, integrated aesthetics into his blood. Some people recalled that in that special era, Zhu Guangqian was arranged to clean the toilet. As an esthetician, he looks at the toilet with an unusual aesthetic vision, is not afraid of dirty smell, cleans the toilet with special dedication, never sloppy, and every wall tile and floor tile must be polished bright and tidy, just like his aesthetic works.
Sources:
"Heart-to-Heart - Zhu Guangqian's Biography"
Baidu Encyclopedia "Zhu Guangqian"
Zhihu "How to Criticize Hu Shi"